WATCH: Tyler Childers' new video, 'In Your Love, ' poignantly depicts gay romance The grassroots country star, whose fan base crosses lines of identity and politics, is releasing a song called In Your Love, from a new album. Its video tells a queer, Appalachian love story.
Tyler Childers is back, and taking chances Announcing a new album, the singer and his friend, the writer Silas House, tell a queer love story
On Sept. 8. The video for the record's first single, In Your Love, depicts a love story between two miners. Childers' friend and collaborator, the writer Silas House, says that he wanted to show that stories like this are part of the story of Appalachia, too. These are human stories, not political stories. Sam Waxman/Courtesy of the artist hide caption
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On Sept. 8. The video for the record's first single, In Your Love, depicts a love story between two miners. Childers' friend and collaborator, the writer Silas House, says that he wanted to show that stories like this are part of the story of Appalachia, too. These are human stories, not political stories.
Tyler Childers has thought a lot about what it means to be an ally. Even if you have the privilege of walking through this world unfazed, it's more important than ever to stand with and for and up for things, to be vocal, the grassroots country star said during a recent long conversation.
Childers was sequestered with his wife Senora and new son at home in Kentucky when the Black Lives Matter movement and the pandemic inspired a nationwide outpouring of protest. A period of self-assessment led the songwriter, known for his richly detailed portraits of contemporary rural life, to become more explicit about his beliefs. First came
I Love You House
, a bluegrass album framed by a stirring anthem decrying racial injustice. Then a triple album with his band The Food Stamps,
, confronted religious intolerance while holding on to the joy of worship. Now, Childers has enlisted his good friend, the noted author and Kentucky poet laureate Silas House, to write a video for his new song, In Your Love, that tells a sweeping story of love between two men.
, coming out Sept. 8, Childers is determined to make his perspectives clearer than ever. The video for In Your Love (directed by Bryan Schlam) features gay Hollywood stars Colton Haynes and James Scully as two miners who build a life together in a Kentucky holler. It's a bold move for a musician whose fan base crosses lines of identity and political belief. Childers and House recently sat down with me in Nashville to talk about their friendship, representing rural life in their art and the glory of the '90s country music videos that inspired their collaboration. House described their motivations, and the point behind Childers' allyship, succinctly: The antidote to shame is seeing yourself in the world.
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Tackles religious freedom and tolerance. Now this video shows your empathy for LGBTQIA+ folks. I don't know how thought out this is, but you're making a whole volume of stories to guide us through these issues.
Tyler Childers: [One] reason that I wanted to do this music video was my cousin growing up, who's like my big brother, is gay. And he graduated from Northern Kentucky, went to Chicago and never came back. He taught me so much about singing; he was my first tough critic. And just thinking about him not having a music video on CMT that spoke to him.
The front cover is made to look like a church hymnal, but I made the spine black, because I have this idea in my head that if you're a Tyler Childers fan and have the whole collection on your shelf, they would all be one color. Because all of that is part of me, and it all ties together.
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Silas House: I think one of the things that makes Tyler such a great artist and such a great friend is that he's so empathetic. He wants to tell a story like this because he has friends and family who are members of the LGBT community, and are part of the story of Appalachia, too. These are human stories, not political stories.
House: Tyler and I talked a lot about the older men in our lives. The farmers and working people. Maybe that's about how much Tyler and I both love Wendell Berry. [In the video] they go from working for somebody else — from the mines — to working for themselves with the land. We talked a lot about that sort of thing. Beyond the love story, we wanted that Appalachian representation too. We looked to our family pictures from this period, and used those pictures in helping shop for costumes, and for set design.
So Jasper and Matthew have friends to dinner. That resonated with me. Queer people in the South do live normal lives, they are part of the larger community.
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House: We often have to create families. But I think even bigger than that, if you look at the way rural, working class and poor people, Black people, gay people are portrayed, especially on TV, it focuses a lot on the despair and not enough on the joy. We wanted to have the joy in there. Because that's what makes a full life, right?
Silas House wrote the video for Tyler Childers' song In Your Love. To see yourself in art is a really important thing, especially if you're from an 'other' place, he says. That's why this [video] matters, especially for country music. Bradley Quinn/Courtesy of the artist hide caption
Tyler, I wanted to talk about how the song lands in the video, and you performing it. Were you thinking about how songs appear in movies? I thought about Dooley Wilson singing As Time Goes By in
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Childers: Our guiding light was to make a '90s music video. Like, I wanted a music video from when I was a kid. There's Tim McGraw in Don't Take The Girl, where he's like in this other place, almost like a warehouse with a bunch of lights but there's a storyline going somewhere else. Then Tim in the warehouse, then back to the story. Or Trisha Yearwood's She's In Love With The Boy — it shows her leaning on a chair in the middle of the street singing, then there's a farm scene that's clearly nearby, and then there she is again, singing, and back to the story taking shape. So I reconsidered. We had an opportunity to tell a really beautiful story, and all of that fun '90s cheesiness would take away from the impact. But we needed to have a spot where we did make an appearance. How could we do that? And Silas and Jason [Kyle Howard, House's partner and a collaborator on the video] decided that having us perform in the club was the best way.
In that scene there's a brief moment where Matthew and Jasper clearly feel threatened by another man who's watching the band. Why is that important?
House: The threat is there in the bar. But they've also shown him they're not gonna take it. They've stood up for themselves, knowing the time and the culture they're living in. They're desperate to touch each other while they hear this beautiful love song. But they also know, to some degree, they have to be careful.
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House: Well, we used a photograph of my uncle and my grandfather as reference. They worked in the coal mines, but on the weekend they went out dancing, and they looked like Elvis and James Dean. Also, I wanted an actor who was a really well-known gay icon. Colton Haynes is a performer LGBT people identify with — with his coming out story and his relationship story and his family story and all that. So he transcends just being an actor; he's a public figure. We were also really lucky to get James Scully, who'd just come off his breakthrough role in
. They both put in so much for this video from early early morning to really late at night. I just couldn't believe how hard they worked.
People always think about Appalachia and mining together, but why was it important to have that element in this video? Why not just make them farmers?
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House: Both of us come from families who have worked in the mining industry. But for me, the main thing is it's just such a quote-unquote masculine thing. Historically they kept women out as much as they possibly could, to the point of women having to sue to go into the mines. There's just little layers to it. And then the most beautiful part of it is that metaphor that you get about coming out.
Again, you could say it's a cliché, but it's also true. Tyler, this is something that comes up in your work a lot — when you're looking at the landscape and the culture where your work is rooted, how do you refer to its touchstones while avoiding cliché?
Childers: If I want
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